IT Techs & Admins: A way to relieve spam on your mailserver

[Force Flow]

If spam is getting you down maybe you ought to try what this guy did…shut down your mail server for two days. According to this guy his spam traffic was down an incredible 97.5 percent! Can’t hurt to try if you can live without your mail server for two days. Ever thought of shutting down the mail server temporarily to stop spam to your inbox permanently? Well, it seems to work. In my case, a two-day shutdown resulted in 97.5% decrease in spam traffic!

~From HardOCP

http://anuragjain.blogspot.com/2004/...have-been.html

[EzyStvy]

Interesting idea.

[bailey]

it seams that all spam has cesed for me, and I have done nothing.
my hotmail inbox has been empty except for the pcmech tips and news letter.

[Statica]

The net proves one thing .. sooner or later there is a webpage for the dumbest idea out there. Turning off an entire mail server for 2 days? Most sysadmins in corporate setups would be out of jobs if they suggested something as ludicrous as that .. "hey .. lets turn off our mail server and let ALL mails bounce back! and while we're at it, I noticed attempts on our company webpage .. lets turn off our webserver as well . Hopefully his idea is taken for what it is .. a gag .. I mean imagine shutting off services around the world periodically .. 5 days at a time. I loved reading the comments though .. hahaha

[EzyStvy]

My company of 15 people in two states is going to try this and probably this weekend. Will post back the results.

[mairving]

Yeah, it does seem to be a rather extreme way of doing things. Of course, if they shut it down and leave it down they will never get any spam. Some of the anti-spam filters can be set to do the same thing. Basically just send a fake NDR report to the spammer. I know that the one that I use GFI's MailEssentials, has this capability. I think that you could also avoid a lot of spam if you shutdown email from 2am-6am, which is when a large load of it comes in.

[Statica]

That is exactly my point; why not use an efficient spam filter instead? A spam filter is the equivalent of call display on your fones so that you can screen your calls... one wouldn't be expected to cancel the fone service for 7 days to see if telemarketeers stopped calling!
A good spam filter can either just trash the spam mail, or even supply NDRs .. the latter does cut down the amount of spam.

The solution provided is really the equivalent of "let's turn off our email server and let's all use our telephones and our fax machines and mail each other snail-mails for a few days and see if that improves the situation".

[wedor]

This has got to be one of the most ridiculous ideas I've ever seen.

[HellFish]

I would love to shut off my mail server for 2 days; just to show all my end users that email isnt "magic" or some form of alien science. But I think I just keep Spam Assassin running instead.